It's been a good eight years.

I'm going to miss that place.

I only knew ye for but a year, but I still feel a little somber! Farewell, friend!

I wish I had the words to say how much you meant to me, but I don't. So I shall simply say... goodbye.

The PPC will go on. We've weathered technical storms before - P@L, Miss Cam, Geocities... the Board is a painful loss, sudden and sharp, but we will continue.

But now, today, we're in a place between. Between the history of what was and the potential of what can be, between the darkening of the theater and the rising of the curtain, between the sunset and the night.

We forgive you your failings. In the end, they didn't matter. You were home, a cradle for this community and the place where an awful lot of us found ourselves, our families, and more. I wouldn't be who I am today if it wasn't for you and the community you housed. (Quite literally! This is where I first encountered concepts like transness and queerness, realized that to live as yourself is an act of incredible bravery.)

I can only hope for forgiveness from the people who left you on bad terms. We were a fractious bunch of kids, and it hurt to see all the old names, to remember how many people left during Drama that in hindsight wasn't all that serious.

There aren't rituals for this moment. I've been present at the deaths of multiple websites, I've been the person who sent the shutdown message to one, who captured the final graph of traffic dropping away to nothing. The internet age is short on rituals, and this is a place sorely in need of one. hS's tribute was lovely and moving and a thing we needed, and... I don't know. It still feels like losing a home.

And so, in this moment, as the sun rises/shines/sets/rests on Samhain around the world, we bid you farewell with words, and memories, and community. We turn out the lights, we lock the door behind us, we take one last look at the number-plate that reads '199610'.

Farewell, Board.

Never regretted meeting you.

In love, may you find the next.

Safe passage on your travels

Until our final journey to the ground.

May we meet again.

So far as I can tell, the Board went down sometime in the last four hours. I have a snapshot of it as of last night, which matches the Google cache, but know there were at least three more posts after that. Does anyone have a copy including any of Robin Goodfellow, Goodnight Board, and Kaitlyn's rare appearance?

hS